Bang Bang
by East-Coast-Invictus
Summary: Post-post AWE. When an immortal-hunting couple sets their sights on Jack and Barbossa, the two pirates are forced to reluctantly band together. Sort of. Temporarily.
1. Chapter 1

Title: **Bang Bang**

Summary: When an immortal-hunting couple sets their sights on Jack and Barbossa, the two pirates are forced to reluctantly band together. Sort of. Temporarily.

Disclaimer: I make no money from this.

o/o/o/o/o/o/o

It was a typical scene. A starry Friday night. A bustling coastal town. A couple newly hooked up at a bar fifteen minutes down the road now returned to the man's dwelling. A tipped over vase. A trail of accessories and apparel from the door to the nearest flat surface, coincidentally in this case a bedroom. A black button down shirt hanging limply from the door knob.

A combination of drink and lust contributes to nights like these. It helped to be a lieutenant in a mob, also. They formed a conspicuous group in a club: a gathering of five clustered in a smoky corner, mostly dressed in black. They usually formed the nucleus of the mob-related crew who orbited around them like flashy and trashy satellites.

The attractive little thing tangling limbs with him this night had been particularly forward. She had approached, brushed by the thug-lined perimeter, and slid onto his lap without a word. Transitioning from the door to the bedroom, she had admitted to doing it on a dare but certainly wasn't regretting it, especially not from the sounds of pleasure she now currently emitted.

Then his Motorola buzzed from the nightstand. The action stopped for a moment as he leaned over to check the caller ID. "What is it, Hector?" the girl, Michelle, asked, brushing a strand of blonde hair behind one ear.

Hector Barbossa (naturally) heaved a perturbed sigh. "Damn lackey." He flipped open the phone to answer. "What? Is it a problem? Then shoot his bloody ass! …Sorry, darlin'. Business."

"That's fine."

The phone returned to the nightstand, and activities resumed. But, of course, the phone just wouldn't stay silent. After the fourth time, Barbossa did his best to ignore it, but his business-minded tendencies had him reaching for the phone again. This time, Michelle held nothing back, just about as frustrated as Barbossa was. "Can't you just turn it off?"

"Missy, in this business, ye don't ignore a call from yer don," Barbossa replied but still wearing a look of extreme annoyance. He spoke the truth, but, as per his usual self, he had aspirations for the throne. And it wasn't the Don. It was the lackey again, Markus. Barbossa wasted no time in addressing the matter.

"Markus, I swear to the heavens above, if this is the same thing, I will come down there meself and see to it that ye never make yer wife happy again as long as ye both shall live."

But it was a stranger's voice that answered, not Markus. Or, rather, not a stranger.

"Markus? Oh, he's busy at the moment. …How's your evening going, Hector?"

"It was goin' mighty fine until now. Ye didn't kill 'im did ye?"

By 'him,' of course, Barbossa meant Markus. He heard Jack scoff lightly. "Just who do you take me for, Hector?" the other pirate replied incredulously. "You make it sound as if I make killing a habit. Why, that'd be a terrible thing t' do. I wouldn't want t' leave whatever ill-begotten spawn dear Markus has fathered, er…fatherless."

Barbossa deliberated for a moment. "Ye do make a point. Silly of me t' ferget how much of a lily-livered pansy ye are."

"Hector, your words wound me."

Barbossa was about to continue on with his verbal harassment, but Michelle was growing bored. Her breath hissed in his free ear as her miraculous hands massaged his shoulders. "What do ye want, Jack? I'm a little busy and have little time for games at the moment."

There was some rustling on the other end of the line. "Ah, right. Just a quick message. Good luck with a new job, and tell the Don Happy Thanksgiving for me, eh?"

"What?" It made about as much sense as Jack Sparrow usually did, which wasn't much, but as precedent had established, there was usually no lack of significance behind it.

"You'll see what I mean. Good night, Hector."

At that moment, a light tremor shook the building, and a fiery orange light blossomed into the room.

--

Standing out of range of the explosion, Jack Sparrow closed the cell phone with a snap. He wore a smug, content expression as he watched the Don's prized yacht go up in flames from the recent explosion. He wanted to see Barbossa work his way out of this one. The spot at the dock where the yacht was now sinking was Barbossa's reserved spot. Of late the Don had purchased a new yacht, which was bobbing happily on the water several spots down. He learned from Markus, now draped in a blunt trauma-induced coma over the dock railing, that Barbossa had offered the spot and insisted the Don use it due to it being out of the way and perfectly secure. Hah. Or so he had thought.

Whistling happily, Jack chucked the phone over one shoulder, paused to hear it plunk into the water, and then merrily set off to prepare for the next step of the plan. Which, spectacularly, was to wait. A rather simple plan, but as customary, dastardly in relation to Jack's arch nemesis for the past four hundred years.

He didn't have to wait long either.

A silver Audi appeared, screaming to a halt in the dock parking lot. Before the engine even turned off completely, Barbossa had kicked his way out of the driver's seat, pulling the hammer back on a 9mm as he strode furiously down the dock. The gun wasn't much use in permanently fixing the problem, but it did leave a bit of a sting.

"While I do applaud ye for opening up an opportunity fer me, Jack Sparrow, you are a'gonna be hurtin'," Barbossa announced, his low quarters rapping sharply on the dock as he approached.

Jack merely grinned, holding back a laugh at the sight. Poor Barbossa looked all askew; his hair, typically pulled back in a tight tail, was loose and astray. That black button down shirt was only half buttoned from the bottom, and the white of a wife-beater showed through. Heck, the man's belt wasn't even buckled.

"So you were busy, eh? I've been in that state of affairs far too many times t' know just how _busy_ you were, mate," Jack declared with a knowing smile.

"Envious, _mate_?" Barbossa returned. "I know ye've been living the transient life of late. I imagine that makes it a touch difficult." By this time, there was about ten feet between them. Jack remained smiling.

"Got a plan to fix all that." He didn't give Barbossa time to reply.

--

Barbossa had to admit it; Jack's next move totally took him off guard. It was an amazing feat to dive tackle somebody from thirteen feet away.

The 9 went off and bucked itself out of his hand as they hit the dock with a thud. The weapon skittered over the wood and dropped over the side, echoing the mournful plunk Markus' cell phone had made not too long before.

Barbossa had to admit this also; Jack was quick. Several blows buffeted his face before he recovered enough to throw the smaller pirate off and scramble to his feet.

It took him about three minutes to come up with Jack's plan, or what he deduced it to be. The Don or another lieutenant was probably en route to destroy whoever decided to have some fun with explosives on the Don's new yacht. Jack was probably planning on framing Barbossa. Of course, the whole situation was just fast forwarding Barbossa's own coup plans, but since this was Jack, it made it personal.

From a distance, it was probably an interesting if not amusing scene. The silhouettes of two men fist fighting against a merry, fiery back-drop. Unfortunately for Jack and Barbossa though, it would attract the interest of the wrong people.

Gradually, a well-placed blow knocked Barbossa backwards off the dock. But, not before he successfully grabbed the collar of Jack's shirt on the way down. The pair of them toppled into the water.

It only ended up being about chest high, the water, so the fight continued on albeit somewhat hindered by low tide. Jack may have been the worse swordsman, but he was a better fist fighter. He had Barbossa's head underwater when the sirens appeared. In a split second, Jack knew that his plan had been foiled by fate. The Don or any associated with him would never appear with cops about.

Being the inherent scallywags and shirkers of the law that they were, both pirates ceased their fight and scrambled frantically about in the water to hide. They dove underneath the dock, feet sinking into the mud below the water just as the pound of feet went by over head followed by the hiss of a firetruck hose being drug behind.

Jack frowned at the failure of his plan.

Barbossa swore as he realized the unlocked Audi was still sitting up in the parking lot.

--

_One month later…_

A voice full of faux-cheer announced the last call for boarders on flight 2713 bound for London. Jack shifted the bag on his shoulder a little, and glanced at a nearby clock; he was early. He pulled a small flask out of his pocket and meandered to the nearest bench to wait for his flight.

He sat down next to a man reading a copy of the local newspaper. Jack took a swig from the flask and settled to people watching. The airport wasn't very busy yet, but the early Christmas travelers and college kids starting winter break leisurely wandered to their respective gates to home. There was a small family of four, the youngest child wearing a Santa Claus hat. There was a balding, middle-aged man running late to his flight who hadn't even paused to put his shoes and belt back on from security.

A young woman in a cashmere sweater and lugging a small wheeled suitcase walked by talking on her phone complaining about the cold. Another small family clustered with 'Welcome Home' signs around a man in a military uniform as he walked into the terminal. Jack chuckled lightly, and drank from his flask.

"How's your afternoon going, Jack?"

Delighted somebody wanted to hear about his afternoon, Jack turned to the speaker, the man next to him with the newspaper. "It is going just pea—Oh. …It's you."

The man reading the newspaper aimed an unpleasant smile at Jack over the top of the Opinion section. "Jaaaack, come now. Ye act as if we're not friends," Barbossa said.

"We've never been friends."

"That's because ye don't have a positive outlook on life, mate."

Jack's brow furrowed. "Who are you, and what have you done with Hector Barbossa?"

Barbossa made a face at him. "Don't get yer hopes up," he replied, snapping the paper back up in front of his face. He was back to regular Hector now; stuffy, cynical, snide. "I just like messin' with ye." Jack made a face in return as he replaced the cap of his flask.

"A shame. Though I do like beating around the bush, I really must ask what exactly prompted you to approach." He paused and gestured to Barbossa's nose, upon which a pair of obnoxiously large sunglass perched. "And why you're wearin' sunglasses indoors."

The other pirate glanced around over the rims of the sunglasses and the Opinion section. When he spoke, he did it in a hushed tone. "In spite of meself and our troubled pasts, I felt 'twas fit t' warn ye. "

"About what?"

Barbossa was about to reply when he froze and dove behind the paper. Jack automatically made himself inconspicuous, a skill he had cultivated and refined over the past 400 years. A trim, fit-looking woman with brown hair walked by disinterestedly before Barbossa reappeared. "That," he hissed, nodding in the woman's direction.

"What'd you do? Forget t' pay 'er?" The sunglasses came off. "Oh…How 'bout that." One eye was swollen almost shut, and the bridge of Barbossa's nose was split.

"Followed me on me way home, ambushed me. Some sort of hunter, as I came to understand."

"Hunter of…?"

"Us. The forever-livin'."

"Ah." Now that was interesting. Like vampires had slayers, immortals had hunters. Not that Jack believed in vampires. It was always possible, of course, but perhaps about as improbable as immortals. "I wonder just how you kill one of us."

"Beats me," Barbossa replied, replacing his glasses. He pulled back his collar to reveal several long but shallow cuts. "Had her nearly take me head off a couple times and then try some sort of syringe shooting contraption. Should see my apartment, or what's left of it."

"What motivation does she 'ave, I wonder. Religion perhaps?"

"Perhaps."

Sitting unnoticed behind them, a bespectacled senior lady wore a dumbfounded expression of near-horror. Having been eavesdropping – accents nearly always catch the unfamiliar ear – the entire conversation came across as quite odd. The venerable dame crossed herself and speedily left to find another seat.

"…anyway you see it, it may be advantageous of us to split up," Jack finished, rising from the seat. Barbossa nodded.

"Even I would acquiesce with that. Best of luck to ye, Jack," he replied, folding up his paper and getting up as well.

"And to you."

With that, they turned and went opposite directions. But not for long.

Jack walked a few steps only to have his path blocked by a tall light-haired man. Barbossa looked up to find the brunette woman standing in front of him. The strange pair advanced on the other strange pair until Jack and Barbossa found themselves back to back.

Jack went with a gut feeling that the blond man was with the woman Barbossa had pointed out. A quick glance spotted the wedding band on the man's left hand, a match to the one he'd seen on the woman's. Jack spoke over his shoulder. "Way to go, Hector, you led 'em to us." Barbossa shot him a glare.

The blond man spoke first. "We can do this the easy way…or the hard way." Both Jack and Barbossa smothered groans.

"Hardly much of a choice, mate," Jack replied. The blond man smiled apologetically.

"Forgive me, I assumed you knew what was about to occur," he said. The woman laughed a little, a smile crossing her face.

"I'm sure your friend here knows," she threw in, tilting her head in Barbossa's direction. Barbossa curled a lip at her.

"We're not friends."

Jack leaned back a little to address him. "I take it they mean to…kill us?" he whispered.

"Aye… in a manner of speaking."

"Oh." Jack looked back at the blond man. "Do we get your names first before heading off to our decidedly grim fate?"

"Of course," the blond man replied brightly. For his job, the man was a touch too light-hearted. "I am Adrian." Adrian fit the picture of the stereotypical heart-throb – handsome, blond hair, broad shouldered, and tall. He spoke easily and eloquently, his accent refined.

"And I am Joan." Adrian's wife was as attractive as her husband. Her brunette hair was pulled back in a neat ponytail leaving a chunk of styled bangs hanging over her forehead. Both of them looked nothing more than a well-dressed couple on the way home from vacation. They moved a couple of steps in a quarter circle to stand side by side as Barbossa and Jack turned to mirror them.

"A pleasure," Jack said after the introduction.

"Unfortunately, the pleasure is lost on me," Barbossa added, still sneering a bit at Joan smirking across from him. Adrian only smiled.

"It's a shame we have to do this," he said with a touch of sadness that didn't quite reach his eyes. "What history you must have seen."

"Indeed, my coifed friend," Jack replied with a smile of his own. "However…" Next to him, he felt Barbossa tense up. "If you actually knew anything at all important about us, then you'd know that we don't usually take the easy way out."

Both pirates moved simultaneously, and it was plain the two hunters had anticipated something like this. They reached for something in their coats once Jack and Barbossa took the first step, but they were too slow. Joan took an elbow to the face and Adrian was tackled to the ground. Before they could recover, Jack and Barbossa were scrambling away and off sprinting through the terminal.

And the chase was on.


	2. Chapter 2

_One week later_

The car, a woody station wagon, was full of silence and the smell of unwashed bodies and antiseptic. As helpful as the "water of life" was when it came to dying, it unfortunately didn't waste its power on minor injuries. Such as those produced from a sound beating.

Barbossa adjusted his grip on the steering while, face expressing mild annoyance when one of the cuts on his knuckles reopened. To his right, Jack was gingerly applying Neosporin to a cut above one eye. The flat plains of the Midwestern United States stretched out all around them, the only sign of civilization being the dilapidated two-lane road beneath them and the spindly telephone wire running parallel with said road. Off to the west, the Rocky Mountains loomed in the distance, a purplish blur on the horizon.

They were going on twelve hours of not seeing the dreaded couple they'd met only a week before. The last meeting had gone much better than anticipated. With a little creative innovation with a wheelie chair, C4, and a rug, they had actually managed to cause almost as much damage to Adrian and Joan as Adrian and Joan had to them. The last glimpse of them had been Joan pulling a semi-conscious Adrian out of the rubble. It had been a pleasing sight for the two renegade pirates.

"So," Jack began. He replaced the cap of the Neosporin and tossed the tube over his shoulder into the back seat. "Let's run over what we know so far about our intriguing head hunters."

"At first I thought ye were going t' say 'let's run over our intriguing head hunters,' but yes, let's."

"You have a twisted mind." There was a pause as they exchanged a brief look. "All right. So we've determined their main method of killing immortals is the removal of one's head via some sort of long, sharp object. If brute force or overcoming the opponent with sword skills does not work, they resort to tranquilizers, and _then _remove said opponent's head."

"They also are in possession of otherworldly powers like ours that inhibit the effects of injury and pain. They live by this theory that there can only be 'chosen' immortals, natural born, and not self-made ones such as ourselves."

"And so they dedicate their ever-lasting lives to the eradication, if you will, of these self-made individuals. A bloody lack of recognition, if I have anything to say about it."

Barbossa nodded, sighing heavily. "Nobody appreciates personal accomplishment these days."

They lapsed into silence once more. Jack leaned over and began fiddling with the stereo. After flipping through several channels of static, a gospel station, and blue grass, he finally found a wavering, tinny sounding Latin station. Peppy Mariachi music broke the silence. Jack rolled down his window and rested his elbow on the frame, enjoying the wind hitting his face. Up ahead, the first car they'd seen in hours appeared on the horizon.

Cars were an amazing thing Jack had come to discover, almost better than being aboard a ship. Much, much faster. He glanced at Barbossa, the silence starting to bug him. "So do you like piña coladas?"

Barbossa had barely opened his mouth to reply when bullets from the other approaching car peppered and tore through the windshield. Both pirates ducked but taking almost direct hits. Jack felt a bullet leave a burning trail across one cheek bone. Barbossa hissed in pain as one ricocheted off his hand and whizzed through the tip of his ear, making the car swerve. The attacking car had to dodge as the station wagon veered over the center line. Even so, the front fender of the attacker and the rear of the station wagon glanced off each other.

Jack and Barbossa spun into the shallow ditch as the other car fishtailed across the highway. The station wagon, now out of control, slammed its passenger side into one of the telephone poles. Silence fell once more, and for a moment, there was little movement on either side.

Jack was roused to consciousness by Barbossa swearing colorfully in another language that sounded like Portuguese. Blinking groggily, he sat up, wishing he'd had the forethought to anticipate his head bouncing off the window. "Let's not do that again," he said, poking experimentally at the bullet score on his cheek.

"I'll say," Barbossa growled, clutching his good hand to his ear while pressing the other to his shirt to staunch the bleeding. "'Tis fortunate I'm left handed." Jack craned his head painfully around to see the other car. As predicted, Adrian and Joan were emerging unscathed. Adrian carried a thin tube that looked like a sword sheath. Joan hefted the automatic weapon used only moments before.

By this time, Barbossa had turned to look as well. The two pirates exchanged looks. "No more running, it seems," Jack mused. Yep, that was definitely a sword sheath Adrian carried.

"Indeed it does," Barbossa replied. He unbuckled his seat belt. "Let's get it over with, then. I'm right sick o' these nut jobs."

"Too right, Hector."

Adrian and Joan saw their targets extricate themselves from the battered station wagon, and together, they paused before the center line. A hot breeze made their matching long overcoats swirl around their ankles. Adrian flashed a brilliant white smile. "Ah. I see they've done some research," he mused. . Joan merely smirked as she tossed the automatic to the side. She pulled back her coat and rested an idle hand on a sturdy sword hilt. Jack and Barbossa emerged from the wreck, sword sheaths of their own in hand.

They crossed the shallow ditch and came to a stop on the other side of the yellow line. The wind blew a cloud of dust over the road as the two pairs stared at each other. Adrian was still smiling when he spoke. "Interesting development, this. Yet still you assume this will not be a one-sided match any longer."

Jack and Barbossa shared an unconvinced look. "Yer not foolin' us, ye prat," the older pirate announced, raking the blond man with a sharp eye.

"Debris doesn't go well wiv the _haute couture, _does it?" Jack chided.

Indeed the formerly well-dressed head hunters now looked about as ragged and disheveled as their targets. Every time the opponents had met over the past week, it seemed to get harder and harder for Adrian and Joan to draw a bead on the wily pirates. The last encounter resulted in the most damage on the pursuers' side – torn elbow seams, split eyebrows, broken skin, dark bruises.

Adrian paused for a moment, face expressing an unnatural-looking amount of annoyance. "Fair enough. Well done, though, I must say," he replied smoothly. A bare hint of scorn lingered in his tone.

"It isn't often we have to engage in the traditional manner," Joan continued, gesturing indifferently with a nod towards Jack and Barbossa's swords.

"Considerin' that it's mighty hard to decapitate an individual with much other than a blade and much harder to revive without a head, we found it rather simple to put the pieces together," Barbossa replied.

"Then you're a far smarter pair than the other frauds we've dealt with in the past," Adrian said.

"Just how do think we managed to live this long, mate?" Jack asked. At this, Adrian barked out a laugh.

"Once again, fair enough. Now, shall we?" He gripped the handle of his thin sword and drew it. The blade was oriental, square with very little curve. Very intricate wrappings not doubt made the hilt easy to hold. Joan's sword echoed her husband's as she drew a heavy looking short sword with a ruby set into the pommel.

"With pleasure," Barbossa replied, showing his teeth in a ghastly smile, albeit whitened in the wake of multiple dental advances over the past century. The two pirates drew simultaneously, tossing the sheaths aside. Even after 400 years, they had kept their respective blades. As the world drew into modern warfare with the gun and explosive, the antique weapons went under lock and key. Neither pirate could bear to part with them; they held too much value to be tossed away with the times. With illegally gathered funds of course, the swords remained in the healthy condition, the blades kept sharp, perfect models that any curator would die to have.

As the four settled into their respective fighting stances, Jack spoke. "Before we enter into no doubt what will become a very interesting battle, one question."

"Of course. It would be rude to refuse what will become your last words."

"You mentioned having dealt with 'frauds' in the past. What do you mean by that?"

Adrian's smile took a condescending air. "There are two types of people in this world. Mortals and immortals. Branching from that, you may find two types of immortals. Those that were born this way and those that weren't. Joan and I, we came into this world destined to be forever in it. There are others like us, and unfortunately, there is a law that dictates that only one immortal may exist. The time for that battle is still far from us. But…" Here, Adrian became uncharacteristically serious. "That time is not meant for those who came by immortality by _short cuts_."

"Essentially, you cheated," Joan continued. "You have taken advantage of a powerful thing and could further take advantage of it should you have discovered that there can only be one. Your place is not among the gifted, but among the thieves."

"And so we have taken up the mantle of eliminating those possible of changing the order of things. The fraudulent immortals. The fakes."

While it should have broken the tension, Barbossa's sudden laugh seemed to merely add to it. "I'm not sure what ye've heard of us, but we ain't exactly heroes."

Jack grinned. "Pirates, in case you didn't know."

"Well, then we'll be doing the world a favor in general," Adrian replied with an easy shrug. Barbossa laughed again.

"You can try."


	3. Chapter 3

The dusty wind ceased.

The opponents were silent.

Adrian moved first.

Jack pulled up his sword hastily to parry the quick oriental blade. Sword fighting again. Thankfully muscle memory in his case had lasted 400 years. He'd been hoping for that. Adrian's foreign blade, though, was something he had never encountered. And history was repeating itself, Jack noticed wearily – he really wasn't the greatest swashbuckler. His opponent's sword must have been folded many times. Adrian's parries were solid and strong, and he recovered the offensive quickly. So he resorted to his typical strategy – dodge and evade, strike when it's open. They danced a backwards trek across the road where the pirates' station wagon rested dejectedly against the telephone pole, quick, staccato notes cutting the air as steel met steel.

The other two were engaged about fifty feet down the road. Barbossa gritted his teeth in frustration as once more Joan's heavy short sword batted his saber away. He skipped backwards, the sword ringing in his good hand. He was thankful now for taking the time to develop some skill with a less dominant hand. It was still non-dominant, though, and he found his speed hampered. Joan was limited to a medieval style of strike-hack-block but she pulled the advantage of having a heavier weapon. Not to mention she went at it like a bat out of hell. They paused for a moment, five strides apart, breathing rapidly and taking stock of the scores of nicks and cuts received within the last thirty seconds of contact. There was no sharp banter. Joan adjusted her two-handed grip and breathlessly blew a stray lock of hair from her eyes. Barbossa shook the strain out of his shoulders, experimentally flexing the fingers of his right hand and failing for the most part. "Well?" he queried suddenly. She scoffed unobtrusively.

"Lightweight."

Barbossa sneered a little, venom not quite reaching his eyes. "All right."

The hood of the station wagon protested with a crumple and groan of metal as Jack jumped up backwards on top of it, stepping back once before pivoting and vaulting up onto the roof mere milliseconds before Adrian's blade sung through the air where his shins had been. The blond immortal was hot on his heels, swinging sideways as Jack turned around. Jack managed to parry but was forced to fall onto his back on the roof. He was hopelessly outclassed; the sting of sword cuts burned in several places on the solid hits Adrian scored. He spent a couple seconds frantically avoiding several over-head chops before managing to parry and deflect one blow. Metal screeched slightly as Adrian's sword sank into it. Jack rolled sideways off the vehicle, landing somewhat heavily on his feet.

Adrian wrenched on his sword to free it, but was unable to in those crucial seconds during which Jack regained his footing. The pirate lashed out with his sword, catching Adrian along the length of his bicep. Adrian hissed at the obviously unwelcome contact, scooting sideways and out of range.

Meanwhile, Barbossa remembered himself. Joan had forced him back to the edge of the road, and he stumbled somewhat over the several inches of drop from the asphalt to the dusty red of the earth. Then the descent into the dip of a ditch caught him. Swearing, he turned the fall into a tuck and roll and came back up in the dry ditch. Joan was raring back to execute a neat side-strike when a scoop of dusty earth struck her in the face. She was brought to a halt, spluttering and eyes watering from the assault of minerals. Barbossa dove forward, swinging upwards with his sword hand, and caught Joan on the chin with the basket hilt.

Jack had a plan. He wrenched open the back door of the station wagon and dove onto the seat, scrambling for a package on the floor. Above him, Adrian's sword jiggled in the ceiling as he attempted to dislodge it. With a shriek of metal on metal, the sword withdrew. Jack finished his fiddling and looked up in enough time to dodge the sword as it punched back through the roof aimed right at him. He rolled back and forth several times before scooting back out of the car, the tip of the offending sword cutting through the seat where his head had been. Unaware of his wife's plight and what Jack had been doing in the back seat, Adrian freed his weapon just in time to have Jack vault up onto the roof and bodily knock him back to the ground. Perfect teeth bared in a snarl, Adrian popped back up from the resulting dust cloud to find Jack striking a triumphant pose atop the station wagon. "Looks like I have the high ground, mate," he said, grinning. Adrian dropped his stance, licking at a bead of blood on his lower lip.

"Looks like it," he conceded between breaths.

Jack peered casually down the road, shielding his eyes with one hand. He didn't like this part of the country. It reminded him too much of a certain place where he was sent by a certain person for a certain reason some time ago that he really did not want to remember ever again. Ever. "Oh!" he declared cheerfully. "And it looks to be my associate has accomplished the same."

Adrian followed Jack's gaze just in time to see Barbossa land a solid punch in Joan's face and knock her down. They then watched him kick her sword from her hand, and place the tip of his blade just under her chin.

"You could say that," Adrian conceded again, this time a little more ruefully.

"I wouldn't be surprised."

"He fights dirty."

"He's a mutinous black-hearted back-stabber. Of course he does."

"What about you?" Adrian turned his eyes up at the pirate before him. "You're a pirate. You said so yourself."

"So I am," Jack replied, smiling a little. "But I prefer to be a little more creative." And he hopped backwards off the station wagon and ran.

"Give up yet?"

Joan's watery, irritated eyes were lit with fury at her predicament. With a twist of her legs, she kicked in an effort to take Barbossa off his feet. Having had enemies on the end of a blade more than once in the past, Barbossa predicted such a thing and only suffered a knock on his shin as he skipped backwards once more. Joan rolled to the side and recovered, casting around for her sword. Barbossa moved to intercept, sword raised to strike.

But then they both were knocked off their feet by the explosion radiating into the desert air from the station wagon.

Jack had to admit it – he and Barbossa did share a fondness for booms. And this one worked splendidly. That package had been some of the leftover C4 from the previous encounter. From his place of cover on the ground at a safe distance, Jack looked up from under his arms to survey the damage, tossing the detonator away from him.

The faithful station wagon was a mere flaming husk now, despondent in its place against the telephone. He couldn't see Adrian.

From his place fifty away, Barbossa brushed a piece of burning shrapnel off his shoulder as he sat up. He wished that he had been paying attention to what his unwilling counterpart had been doing. Coming in at this point, he wasn't sure what kind of effect the explosion had had on Adrian. Speaking of which…

He scrambled to his feet and hastily made for Joan, who was uncurling from a protective position to dive for her weapon. She rose up in a spin and thrust out an arm. Barbossa skidded to a halt, and both opponents found the tips of their respective weapons pressing uncomfortably under their respective chins.

"Yer not too bad fer a hacker," he said. Joan regarded him icily from beneath a few messy locks of hair.

"I thought for a moment you'd say not too bad for a woman," she replied.

"Nay, I've known a fair amount of excellent female swashbucklers in my day to say so."

"Fair enough."

For a moment, Barbossa's eyes flicked to the fiery scene not too far away. Joan's followed his. "It didn't kill him," she said, fixated on the burning husk of a vehicle.

"Of course not." Barbossa noticed Jack getting up in his perpetually drunken manner. "Might have hurt some, though." He shot a glance at Joan. "I don't know if ye realize this, but yer 'job' as a fraudulent immortal hunter I find t' be quite baseless." Her eyes narrowed.

"How so?"

"Well, seein' as how neither of us would have even known about yer little true immortal power-struggle if ye hadn't tracked us in the first place, ye would have had little to worry about. We would have never known, and ye certainly wouldn't have had t' go on this little goose chase. Doesn't it get a trifle lonely being only one immortal in a sea of mortals?"

Joan's gaze was hard and unreadable. Finally, a blackened and battered figure rounded the hood of the station wagon, bent over in pain. Jack cupped his hands around his mouth. "Give up, mate. You can't kill us!"

Adrian looked up at him, one eye closed against a fresh flow of blood from his forehead. He straightened stiffly, holding his blackened blade at his side. "Perhaps," he croaked. "But it is as your friend said." He dropped the sword. "I can try."

He reached into coat at that moment and in one swift movement, drew, aimed, and fired the pistol he had in the holster underneath his arm.

Jack dropped like a stone.

Barbossa felt his eyebrows raise in a small amount of…surprise? Respect? He had pegged Adrian as one of those honest by-the-blade types. He laughed. The sound of a hammer being drawn back echoed Adrian. "I must admit, you two didn't strike me as the type fer this."

The muzzle of Joan's gun jammed itself painfully into the base of his solar plexus. So much for appealing to the girl's heart and sensibilities.

"That's what you get for bringing a knife to a gun fight, then, eh?"

And then nothing.

A/N: Found some minor inconsistencies in the second chapter so I went back and edited those. Took out the summary and author's note on chapters one and two just for aesthetic reasons. I do apologize for the terrible delay, my dear subscriber-esque folks. The muse fled a while back. Anybody else hate it when that happens? Oh…here's another one, real quick (heh.) I've done no research for this so do forgive how I b-s my way through some of the sword, explosion, and Highlander stuff. I'm feeling this one to be a little holey, so to speak, plot-wise. It starting writing itself, and at this point, I usually hang on for the ride and tug the reins a little to get to some place feasible. Let me know what you think! :D Thanks, all you reviewers and fave-ers! I'll reply when I can!


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